Summer Undercover

As we near another summer of live music Undercover hit the rehearsal rooms gearing up for our open air events, weddings in August and new material to consider.
Andy is now part of the history of Undercover, leaving earlier in the year, and Adam has stepped up from dep guitarist to lead, so we thought it sensible to reflect the changes. We're working on a new website, logo and a host of new songs.
There's plenty of options being aired in the studio including Valerie (Zutons/Amy W.), Sunday Bloody Sunday & Pride (U2), Times Like These (Foo Fighters), Mr Brightside (Killers) and a new ska medley. We should soon see an airing of our Beetles/Hendrix version of Day Tripper and Therapy's Screamager which John has been wanting to do for ages. The Thin Lizzy medley is still in progress, which currently starts with Jailbreak and The Boys are Back in Town. Ian Dury's Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll is also nearing an airing.
Last weekend we attended the Stanford Music Festival, something we've wanted to be a part of for a number of years. Finally we had the opportunity to give it our all so it was good to see some familiar faces, thanks to everyone that came along. A big thanks and thumbs up to the organisers of this excellent event, with special mention to Steve from the Heaters who compered throughout the day with great spirit and finished with a great set from the band.
This weekend we meet up with Steve again at the Brentwood Beer and Music Festival which he has helped to organise. This event was formerly held at the White Horse, Coxtie Green which we supported for a number of years, helping a variety of charities. We attend the Sunday slot at 1pm for 45 minutes, following on from Scooby that open the day. However the whole weekend has bands including the Boomtown Rats, Eddie and the Hot Rods plus a number of tribute and local bands.
August sees Undercover function entertain at 3 weddings, followed by a couple of birthday events leading us into the end of September, when band holidays should also have finished.
October takes us back to the pubs and clubs with The Bull, Colchester on Sat 1st Oct, Fatling & Firkin, Hornchurch on Fri 7th Oct and our 2nd visit to the Horse & Well, Woodford Green on Sat 8th Oct.
Hope to see you all amongst the crowd, but please come over to say hello if you get the opportunity.

Crown charity gig raises nearly £900

Our gig at the Crown pub in Hornchurch on the Sunday of August Bank Holiday helped to raise close to £900 for St. Francis Hospice.
Local and National press photographer Rob Welham BA took a bunch of shots and kindly allowed us to reproduce them.


Pete and Adam our dep for Undercover

Singer Alan of Sciatica

Jamie from the Reason

Jamie from the Reason

The Reason and guest vocalist bash out a great cover from Muse

YouTube, reviews and emails

We now have a YouTube account as UndercoverPete. The 4 videos can be watched on our site under the contacts page or why not watch and comment directly in YouTube.

If you've seen us lately perhaps you'd like to give us a review and have it posted on our site. So often we hear praise and thanks but its nice to share that with others. Just send us an email and we'll add it to the site.

We know everyone gets lots of email, but we try to keep ours down to a minimum (3 or 4 a year) so we've now moved over to an email provider to help people subscribe and unsubscribe easily as well as provide added security against spam. If you'd like to subscribe just send us an email.

It's all for charity

The August Bank Holiday weekend saw Undercover play Sunday evening at the Crown in Hornchurch, a 45 minute slot, along with many other bands (eg. Hell n Back, Captured, The Reason and Sciatica), in aid of St Francis Hospice. It was a very well attended night, with an extention till midnight and a fantastic laser lightshow laid on for each of the bands. Huge thanks go to Jamie from the Reason for manning the PA and Gary (?) for the lighting.

It was our 2nd charity event at the Crown for 2010 but we're pleased that we also managed the Fatlin and Firking event in April for Help for Heroes, a charity event at Langtons, Hornchurch in aid of St Francis Hospice during February, the White Horse beer festival in Coxtie Green in aid of Special Needs and Parents in July, followed the next day with our help at Midsummer House in Debden in aid of Live Life Then Give Life. It's been a good year for charities.

Our next gig is at The Sun in London Road, Romford on Saturday 4th September followed by a band holiday break and a return to the Crown on Friday 1st October.

Time flies

I can't believe its been over a year since I've been in here, especially considering how well we've been received lately. The start of the year produced 5 excellent gigs which seemed to raise our level and we've been riding that wave for a while now, and fingers crossed no slip ups.
Most recently our gig at the Stanford Welcome club and charity event at the Fatling & Firkin in Hornchurch have received rousing applaud but both gigs wouldn't allow for us to continue longer due to time constraints and having no energy left!
We're about to do 3 very local gigs at the Sun, Romford on 24th April; Crown, Hornchurch on 30th April; and Fatling & Firkin, Hornchurch on 1st May. We've also recently had confirmation of helping to raise funds for charity at the White Horse Beer Festival, Coxtie Green on Sunday 11th July, 8-9pm with a host of other bands over the 9-11th.

Sat Night at The Firkin in Hornchurch

Thought I would be the first to write in the blog this year. What a night Saturday was! We were expecting a half empty pub with everyone being too skint to come out and see us, what with the credit crunch and paying for Xmas etc. How wrong we were! The Firkin was rammed, probably the fullest I have seen it in a very long time and everyone was going for it in a big way. It was taking 15 minutes to get served at the bar but that didn't put anyone off. We played two Rocking Sets that had the whole pub jumping up and down. So if you were there shouting and singing and dancing thanks for helping to make it a rocktastic night. Cheers x

What a weekend!

Our weekend was a fitting end to the year for Undercover gigs. On Friday morning we were asked by Pete from Napkin A*se & Squabbler to help them out as they were a singer down and had to cancel their gig at The Fatling & Firkin. We were also a man down with our bass player and PA man so step forward Pete to help us out with both. Using the Squabbler PA we carried off an excellent gig in front of lots of muso's, including the rest of Squabbler and Tony from Napkin A*se, and received plenty of praise from Matt who organises the gigs at the Firkin - "the best band on a Friday night for months!"
Saturday brought our last public gig at The Bull, Colchester and what a stonker of a gig it was. A packed venue which once again was full to capacity and everyone seemed up for it. We were going down extremely well which explains why we carried on past 12 for another 25 minutes of covers. It has to go down as one of our best gigs ever - even the bouncers were dancing! Really looking forward to visiting in 2009.
At the end of the night we met the band that were playing in the music room, SurfQuake who cover lots of surf songs, write some of their own and include Nelson, the bass player from New Model Army. Hopefully we'll catch these guys gigging one day and surf the night away.
The weekend was followed with our last gig of the year, at Parklands, Quendon entertaining for a wedding on Monday. Lots of Christmas feel to this and the lighting was almost solely supplied with candles. Our best wishes go to the bride and groom for a long and successful life.

Undercover get a Christmas make-over

Well, we're firmly into December and the website has taken on a Christmas theme with our snow background and Christmas fun video. We've also created a Flash player so that you can listen to the tracks we recorded in July direct from the site. Of course those who don't have Flash enabled can download the tracks and play them in their music players eg. QuickTime, Windows Media Player or direct from the likes of iTunes. Both the video and tracks can be found on our Undercover website and Undercover
MySpace site.

Why not view the Christmas video and listen to our tracks and give us some feedback via our Undercover email.

Our last public gig for 2008 is at The Bull Hotel, Crouch Street, Colchester which promises to be a very lively night. Hopefully we'll see some familiar faces but please arrive early as quite often the venue fills to capacity (on one occasion even we couldn't get back in LOL).

Undercover would like to thank everyone for supporting us during 2008 and wish all our "undies" and "undercrackers", promoters, publicans, organisers and helpers a Wonderful Christmas Time and best wishes for 2009. Perhaps we'll see a few of you in the new year at The Shark, Harlow on 17th January.

Website Move

We've moved our site from its old host to a new host and amending a few things whilst we do so. We've provided links of 3 mp3s that we recorded in late July and hopefully we'll soon be improving on our photo library.
We've decided to reduce the amount of gigs for 2009 and have already taken bookings for the Fatling & Firkin, Hornchurch; The Crown, Hornchurch, Stanford Welcome Club, The Bull, Colchester and the Shark, Harlow.
We should also have some new badges created before the end of the year so watch out folks.

2008, its going to be busy!

It's a while since I've added to the blog so here's an update of what's happening.
We've got nearly 40 bookings for the year, some in our regular venues and some in some new pubs and areas.
We've recently taken a few bookings at the Bull in Colchester after a superb gig there in January. The punters seemed to really enjoy this gig so hopefully we'll see them again when we return in June. It was our first time using the in-ear monitors and the difference was quite apparent. Took a little while to settle into these in rehearsals but we now find them a great addition to the band. We've also taken on a gig at the King's Arms in Colchester which gives us the chance to entertain on a Sunday afternoon, should be interesting, plus we've been asked if we can play the Town Hall for a special event planned in the summer.
Another new venue for us is the Bridge House in Canning Town which once again opens its doors to live music. The Bridge House was famous for putting on the likes of Iron Maiden, Depeche Mode, Secret Affair, Damned, Sham 69, Stray Cats and individuals such as Mick Jagger, Billy Bragg, Alex Harvey and Jeff Beck. You can catch up on the new site here: http://www.bh2live.com/ and for those that remember the venue there's also a link to the old site to reminisce.
We're now confirmed to play at the Bell Bash once more by supplying our stage, lights and ourselves over the August Bank Holiday to raise monies for local charity MEDICs.
Another couple of great additions comes in the form of the Welcome Club in Stanford-le-Hope where last year we played for the Scooter Club and the Mill House in Dagenham, both CIU affiliates. We can arrange for guests to attend either of these venues by prior arrangement.
We've also been asked to entertain for the fourth year at the biggest beer festival we attend, the Thurrock Beer Festival at Grays in June. This is a wonderful event with a huge amount of beer, plenty of room and only a small charge to attend. The staff are particularly friendly and we always give them the opportunity to have a congo behind the bar!
We hope to see some of you, or even all of you, at one of the various gigs we have booked for 2008.

Keep your partners warm and your beer cold.

Bell Bash 2007

What an excellent weekend! The Bell Bash arrived on a brilliant Sunny weekend and became the busiest ever festival at the Bell Inn with entertainment on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Plenty of "Undies" came up to see us on Saturday and many of the local following came to cheer us on too. Undercover went down an absolute storm and the front of the stage looked like a mosh pit at times. With a charge on entry this year the donations to local charity, MEDICS is in excess of £2,700.
There was a big increase in those camping too which only encouraged us to stay up later than we should, it all added to the fun but we felt a bit rough for our day time gig in Sawbridgeworth on Sunday.
A big thanks to everyone who supported us and thanks to the Undies for travelling up and camping the night away.

There's a number of pix on the website and I'll be adding more over the weekend but here's some specifically for the blog.


Two pix before the event, glorious sunshine but not a pint passed my lips yet!




The Undies show their appreciation



Jill shows she means business



The Undies are off



BBQ time for the hungry ones



Nigel brings out his litre bottle which sank before the sun rose

Mick is on the mend

Last weekend we had to cancel our performance at the White Horse Beer & Music Festival, Coxtie Green due to Drummer Mick's knee problems and a lack of singing voice from Pete. Mick has a recurring injury to his leg where his knee pops out causing quite a bit of pain. He was recently admitted to hospital and was operated on earlier this week. We're glad to say he's now on the mend and we hope to see him behind the drums for the Crown, Hornchurch gig on 27th July, however we have our old drummer Dennis on the sidelines just in case.

On Sat 14th July we entertained for Daren's 40th Birthday with Gavin on the drums. Gavin has previously depped for exposé and had his own band, Cactus Jack. The gig went well considering we hadn't rehearsed with Gav for over 5 years! There's a few pix on our website for you to have a look at Band Photos

This week we have the drummer from The Doctors entertaining the guests for a wedding near Saffron Walden. The Doctors are supporting us at the Bell Bash so we're looking forward to meeting at least one of them although Mick's had enough of doctors for the moment :-)

Sat 23rd Pelican 10th Birthday Party

Saturday evening we were invited to entertain the parents to celebrate the 10th Birthday of the Pelican Prep School in Cambridge. With everyone dressed to impress in dinner suits and ball gowns the evening started with a champagne reception and dinner in a superb marquee. Undercover took to the stage at 9.45 as the guests were "itching to get on the dance floor". 2 sets of over an hour each were not enough and as our rendition of Teenage Kicks went down so well we gave Blur and the Clash an airing. They demanded more so we heated the evening up with Pretty Vacant and finally finished at nearly 12.30 with Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit.
We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, so a big thanks goes out to the parents some of whom couldn't miss a photo opportunity. Congratulations on your 10 years and long may it continue.

Festival Fun

I had a great time at the Thurrock Beer Festival. One of the few times this year that I can put the UHF link on my guitar and run around almost as much as Pete! Great gig and a great crowd.

Straight after the gig I drove up to Nottingham getting to Jill's house (my g/f) at 2.30am and the next day we hit the DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL.

What a day! Bowling for Soup were the most entertaining band of the day but others we saw were Marilyn Manson, Slayer and the mighty Motley Crue.

Still getting over the hangover!

Lets see some of your festival pics on here

Undercover at Thurrock Beer Festival

Thanks to everyone who attended the Thurrock Beer Festival last night, a fantastic gig with nearly 1,000 drinkers in attendance, drinking most of the barrels dry. It was hot, the air was thin, the monitors over heated but the punters rocked their asses off. It was our first Friday attendance after appearing on Saturday on the 2 previous years but as a result of this performance we've been booked again for next year. We've got a ton of photo's to sort, some we'll put on here and others will go on the website and our Undercover MySpace site. Thanks to all those who came up and congratulated us, makes it all the more worthwhile, hope to see you at another gig or next year for some more classics and trashics.

Pubs change payment scheme to bands

For the purposes of clearing up an issue with payments at a number of venues I thought I'd create a blog open for discussion for bands and anyone wishing to comment.

Recently the paying arrangements at various pubs, including the Coopers Arms in Chadwell Heath, Towngate in Basildon and Fatling & Firkin at Hornchurch were changed as the head office has chosen to use a company called EVENT UK as paymaster. Whilst a company taking care of the finances is a good move there were concerns that the payments to the bands would be delayed by 4 weeks, paid by cheque and there were initial concerns that Event UK would take commission from those payments. A number of bands were not happy with this arrangement and cancelled gigs because of it. However, tonight I received the agreement forms detailing the new arrangement.

Bands are required to complete details of address, identification, bank account details and declaration by signed agreement and are to invoice Event UK direct. The band will be paid the usual fee direct to their bank account the Friday following the received invoice (assuming the agreement has been received by Event UK). All bookings will continue through the pub management.

On Friday 25th May Undercover play the Fatling & Firkin, Hornchurch, under the new arrangements and we will be reporting how the system worked for us in the assurance it may inform others.

We're hoping that the venues don't suffer as a result of this new arrangement but as we frequent some of these pubs we feel there's a loss to all if some of the top bands decide no longer to play at these venues. It's noticeable from livebandphotos that perhaps that has already become the case.

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Bass player Terry hits 50

Friday 27th April saw Undercover descend on the Coach and Horses in Newport, Essex to celebrate bass player Terry the Tooth's 50th birthday. The secret gig at the pub where they first started back in 2001 saw the introduction of our new shirts, Andy in his Nun's outfit and Terry get the classic cream pie in the face. The set-list consisted of many of Terry's favourite covers, starting with Fight for Your Right to Party, Teenage Kicks and our first public performance of the Automatic's Monster. After copious amounts of Spitfire, Guinness and nuclear Scrumpy we moved over to Terry's house to see the sun rise whilst singing along to bad ass guitar playing.
My head's still hurting but the words never again didn't cross my lips!

Coxtie Green Beer & Music Festival

We're currently helping to organise the White Horse Beer and Music Festival at Coxtie Green, Brentwood, the biggest FREE festival in the area. Starting Thursday 12th July and continuing til Sunday evening on 15th, there will be a dj on the Friday night plus live music all day Saturday and Sunday.

The line-up for this year's event starts with the NapkinArse, Shakedown, Hell n Back, Reeper, Rusty Sherrifs and finishes with the Fabulous Chocolate Turtles on Saturday. Sunday starts with Stealer, Lobster, Shady Deal, Undercover and finishing with Dave Danger and Beef for Sunday. In addition The White Horse Band are set to entertain within the pub on Friday night and DJ Dansey will hit the decks in the beer garden.

This year's chosen charity is The Little Havens Children's Hospice - offering specialist one on one care for children with life-threatening and life-limiting illnesses.

Timetable, maps and links to band websites appear on the Undercover website.

(09/04/07: edited for full line-up and charity confirmation)

UndercoverPete
w: www.undercover.me.uk

Who you listening to at mo?

What's on your iPod, your car stereo or CD deck? What are you listening to at the moment? I'm cramming my 4gb Nano with some of the latest albums and a few from the past plus quite a few podcasts on web standards, boagworld being a prime example.
Amy Winehouse, Mika, Paul Weller, the Chilis, The Good The Bad & The Queen, Fratellis and of course the Foo Fighters plus the Ramones are all getting a large amount of airplay. Recent additions are Maximo Park and The Gossip although I'm not entirely convinced about either yet, best I boot up iTunes then!

UndercoverPete
w: www.undercover.me.uk

Tried out some new songs

For the last few months we've been looking at adding new songs to our repertoire, some of which we've ditched, others we've now included in our set and some that we're still working on.

Queen's Crazy Little Thing Called Love didn't make the grade so, sorry Freddie.
Slade's C'mon Feel The Noise made an appearance at The Tavern, Rush Green and we observed quite a few people singing along to it. We need some more work on this so expect to see it again.
The Fratellis' Chelsea Dagger got its first airing at The Tavern and is now firmly in the set, ooooh we love it, dah dah dah dah dah dah...
The Prince, by Madness and Boys Will Be Boys by the Ordinary Boys have now been added to our Ska medley and we can't get enough of it, skankin!
We've always wanted to do All These Things That I have Done by the Killers and so we recently tried this in rehearsal. It seems to be working well and we expect to get it involved during the festival gigs.
We also tried What's That Coming Over the Hill by The Automatic which we recon will get plenty of response. It's doing well and we expect to see this in the set for the gigs in May.

If you have some suggestions on songs we could try or opinions on our recent additions then please feel free to add your comments.

UndercoverPete
w: www.undercover.me.uk